


Wanderlust

by Ena2705



Category: Psych
Genre: Gen, Shawn falling for Jules, Wanderlust, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:15:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23437549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ena2705/pseuds/Ena2705
Summary: Six years in one place and Shawn was beginning to feel antsy. He needed to get out, needed to travel. But could he leave Psych behind?
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	Wanderlust

He first noticed it one Wednesday morning as he was riding to the station. The wind picked up and he smelled a vaguely familiar scent, one he couldn’t place in the moment as he was concentrating on the road ahead.   
Tyres against the hot tarmac began to irritate him. The heat they were producing smelt too similar to that first breath of air when the doors to an airplane opened. He was too hot in his jacket. The leather felt like it was sticking to his skin. The breeze rushing through his hair angered him, like it was taunting him. He missed roaming down forest surrounded highways in the middle of nowhere. The journey began to feel endless. 

He finally pulled into the station and ripped his jacket off the second the keys were out the ignition. Too hot. Too Californian. He resigned that day as an off-day.   
Just get in, get a gig, get it solved, get paid, go home, sleep it off.   
The terracotta tiles on the stairs annoyed him. Reminded him of the Italian rooftops. The yellow paint on the walls of the station annoyed him. Too similar to the hotel he worked at in Spain. He marched onwards, determined to get the day over with but there was a murder case. Back on the dreaded bike, back on the too-hot jacket. 

It was increasingly hard to concentrate on driving. A pain had begun to spread across his chest, a lump in his throat that wouldn’t go when he swallowed. He narrowly avoided driving head-first into a truck. Even that was mocking him, Canadian license plates. He arrived at the victims house and almost immediately had to walk back out again, the interior was decorated traditionally, classically Thai. He didn’t have the energy for a theatrical revelation, he simply muttered where they would find the murder weapon, turning to leave before he verbalised his pain. 

“Shawn! Wait!”  
Jules. He paused.   
“Are you okay? You seem off today. Are you feeling well?”  
That was an understatement.   
“I’ll probably be fine tomorrow, Jules. The spirits have just drained me.”  
Her sympathetic smile almost made him want to tell her the truth. Almost. She’d probably think him pathetic, childish.   
“Well why not go home and rest for a bit? You’ve helped greatly with the case already. Hope you feel better tomorrow.”

He didn’t go home, instead heading straight to the Psych office, where he curled up on the couch and finally allowed him to groan in pain. He shut his eyes and his mind was immediately flooded with images. He was assaulted with memories of everywhere he had travelled and it hurt, physically and mentally hurt. Eventually he fell into a restless sleep, only to be woken several hours later by Gus. He sat up and his neck hurt, like the time he had to spend a night on a park bench in The Netherlands. Damnit. The pain hadn’t stopped, it was still there. His partner knew something was wrong, but realised this one of those times when he shouldn’t push the situation. 

The next morning he had come to a decision. Six years was a long time for him to stay in one place, but he really enjoyed what he had going on. He got to work with his best friend, flirt with a beautiful woman, and fight crime without being bound by procedure. He didn’t want to leave Psych behind but knew that if he didn’t do something soon, he would do something stupid, ruin any chance of continuing his life here. 

He had to leave. 

Not forever, just for a month or two, to scratch this itch, fill the gaping hole in his chest. But this time he wouldn’t just flee in the middle of the night. He had a plan: he’d go into the station, inform the chief he would be unavailable for the next few months; he’d pay the landlord in advance for Psych and his apartment, not foot the bills on Gus; speaking of Gus, he’d fully explain the situation to him, he’d understand; he’d say goodbye to Jules and Buzz and the rest of the police force by bringing in cookies for them all, pineapple ones of course; he’d pull Lassie aside and tell him to take good care of Jules, whilst also telling him to enjoy the next few months without Shawn; and he’d go over to his dad’s house one last time for dinner tonight to say goodbye, not a note on the kitchen table like last time. The Norton would stay in his dad’s garage; he planned to travel far and wide.

-

Russia was a whole new experience. He enjoyed it plenty; the architecture was amazing, the elderly woman who took him in for a week in exchange for Shawn’s help fixing things up around the house was incredibly friendly and welcoming, the language was pretty easy for him to pick up, but any language was really, and ice skating on a frozen over lake brought a familiar sense of joy. When it was time for him to move on, he had left a pile of cash for the kind stranger who took him in, and his phone number as he knew she got lonely sometimes now her son worked a busy job and had his own family. Shawn promised to always be available for a chat. 

Singapore was a complete contrast to where he stayed in Russia. From a rural village to a bustling city, he found himself entranced by the buildings that seemed to reach forever. Here, he was more than happy to spend every day exploring, but soon grew tired, it was fun, but too fast paced for so early in his travels. Nevertheless, he made friends and exchanged stories with people more than eager to listen to him recall the time he discovered a dinosaur. 

He wanted his travels to be meaningful, so he spent the next two and a half weeks helping rebuild houses after a wildfire destroyed a village in Crete. It wasn’t sweltering hot, they worked from sunrise to mid-morning, and then again from late afternoon until night, after the air had time to cool once more. It was hard work, and he went to bed each night with callouses and woke each morning with aching limbs, but the men at the kafenio welcomed him with smiles and a game of cards, and the women in the village square waved him goodbye with fresh meat and bread when his work was done. He’d return one day, he vouched, when he decided to marry and could show his new wife the houses he built as he promised to build a home with her. 

His next stop was a visit to an old friend in London. Of course, this time he wasn’t allowed in any government building, but they caught up and he visited Camden market. The city was vibrant and full of culture, he couldn’t help but stop and talk to anybody who would give him the time. He didn’t just want to stay in London though, and later in the week, he ventured north to Liverpool. The Cavern Club and Albert Docks were nothing like he imagined, but he found the city exciting and full of magic, like the streets knew they had been walked by people that changed the world. 

Deciding it was time to head back over to his side of the pond, his first stop was to DC to catch up with some friends, but was disappointed to find they were out of town for work. Not deterred, he decided to hitchhike to Portland to visit his cousin. He knew the dangers of hitchhiking, experienced a few of them, but he couldn’t deny it still filled him with excitement, and soon enough he was punched by his cousin for acting so stupidly. Which was immediately followed by a hug, as he hadn’t seen the man in forever. They spent the next few days together before his cousin also had to leave town for work. 

Shawn wasn’t ready to go back home just yet though, and so decided to travel back to Brazil for a week. Herding goats was just as fun the second time round, and he brushed up on his Portuguese on the beach, making friends with street vendors and helping them out at peak times of the day. He hung around for one football match, the atmosphere amazed him, the crowds so active and jovial, despite losing the match, and just being happy that the hadn’t lost by _too_ much. He woke the next morning with a bittersweet smile, he was having so much fun travelling, but was beginning to miss Santa Barbara, and knew it was time to return. 

-

Two days later, he walked in the station to declare himself open for business, and was greeted by familiar faces pronouncing how glad they were that he was back, they missed his banter brightening the mood. The chief commented how he looked refreshed and happy, and he recalled some of his favourite tales. Lassie muttered something about it being too quiet whilst Shawn was gone, though he wouldn’t repeat the sentence when asked to speak up. His dad gave him a clap on the back and handed back the keys to his bike. Gus, of course, had been kept up to date the whole time through postcards, so simply gave Shawn a hug and a fist bump. And Juliet, she admitted that he looked sun-kissed and trimmer, and when he explained that the muscle gain was probably from his time on the Greek isle, he realised that she was the one he wanted to take back there.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to call this one “Emily listens to Def Leppard at midnight and feels nostalgic and wants to go back to Poland so looks at pictures and then begins to feel a sense of wanderlust and thinks ‘what the hell, I had coffee an hour ago so its not like i’d be sleeping anyway, may as well write a fanfiction’” But apparently that’s too long a title. 
> 
> Also this quarantine SUCKS, I was supposed to be in America right now but instead I’m stuck at home. Yeah, yeah, safety and all that, but mannnn


End file.
